Proven Practice

IBM Cognos 8 Performance

Tuning Cheat Sheet
Product(s): IBM Cognos 8
Area of Interest: Performance
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Copyright © 2008 Cognos ULC (formerly Cognos Incorporated). Cognos ULC
is an IBM Company. While every attempt has been made to ensure that the
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Contents
1. IBM COGNOS 8 PERFORMANCE TUNING CHEAT SHEET ............................... 4

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1. IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

Component/ Setting Default Recommended Reason/Comments
Service Value Starting Value

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IBM Cognos 8 Processing Capacity 1.0 For each server: This setting dictates the
Dispatcher number of BI requests that will
Appropriate value be handled by a particular a
is a function of server in the IBM Cognos 8
the number of topology.
CPUs, CPU clock
rate, memory, etc By default, requests will be
in relation to distributed so that each server
other servers in is expected to handle an
the topology. equivalent number of requests.

While it may be difficult to

estimate a precisely correct set
of values for heterogeneous
server environments, there are
several methods that can
improve the relative accuracy
of this task.

1) Use the relative

performance ratings of
a server (provided by
hardware vendors).
2) Estimate the process
capacity for a server
using one variable at a
time in the order of (#
of CPUs, clock rate of
CPUs)

It is important to monitor the

request rate through the Server
Administration tool of IBM
Cognos Connection. Isolate
the Report services to monitor
interactive usage. This will
indicate whether the applied
process capacity settings lead
to expected behavior. Key
metrics to observe include
Latency and Requests per
second.

If latency is building up on one

report service while others are
functioning freely, reduce the
process capacity on the high
latency server.

In general, monitor the

requests per second metric so
that the number is proportional
to the capacity of each server
in the topology.

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Component/ Setting Default Recommended Reason/Comments

Service Value Starting Value
ReportService Maximum number 2 For each server: This setting dictates the
processes for the 2 * # of CPUs number of BIBus processes
Interactive report service that will be spawned to handle
interactive processing activity.

Number of high affinity 1 For each BIBus
connections for the
Interactive report service
Must be considered in
combination with Batch Report
service settings. Overlap in
interactive and scheduled
activity may warrant a lowering
of this threshold to
accommodate both processing
activities.
This setting indicates the
process: 1 number of threads available
per interactive report server
(BIBus process) to handle high
affinity requests.

This setting must be

considered along with the low
affinity connections setting.
Number of low affinity 4 For each BIBus This setting indicates the
connections for the process: 2 number of threads available
Interactive report service per interactive report server
(BIBus process) to handle low
affinity requests.

This setting must be

considered along with the high
affinity connections setting.

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Queue timeout limit for 240 300 seconds This setting is used to
the report service seconds determine the length of time in
(seconds) seconds in which a request will
be queued in a ReportNet
dispatcher before being
terminated. If the queue
timeout limit is exceeded, an
error will be returned indicating
that a process “… was not
available within the configured
time limit”

A request will reside with the

dispatcher until an appropriate
high/low affinity connection
becomes available.

This setting can be used to

troubleshoot an environment
that is perceived to be queuing
requests even though system
resources appear underutilized.
To help determine this, change
the setting to a small value
(e.g. 5 seconds) and monitor
the system for an error page
indication.

Component/ Setting Default Recommended Reason/Comments

Service Value Starting Value
BatchReportService Maximum number of 2 For each server: This setting dictates the
processes for the batch 1 * # of CPUs number of BIBus processes
report service that will be spawned to handle
scheduled processing activity.

The number of high 1 For each BIBus
affinity connections for
the batch report service
Must be considered in
conjunction with Report service
settings. Overlap in interactive
and scheduled activity may
warrant a lowering of this
threshold to accommodate
both processing activities.
This setting is not applicable to
process: 1 (just scheduled activity processing.
leave the default) Current scheduling functionality
does not possess any high
affinity requests

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The number of low affinity 2 For each BIBus This setting indicates the
connections for the batch process: 2 number of threads available
report service per batch report server (BIBus
process) to handle low affinity
requests.

This setting must be

considered along with the high
affinity connections setting.

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